Religion

For a little fun on a Tuesday morning, the folks over at National Lampoon need your help.

They are considering making a feature length film that is basically a modern version of their successful hit from the ’70s “Animal House” with a terrorist tilt.

However, they want the public's opinion as to whether or not they should make this film, and have created an online poll to assist them with their decision. 

Lampoon’s website describes the premise of the comedy (video link available after the break due to the somewhat crude and vulgar content, h/t Charles at LGF):

According to Coalition for Urban Renewal and Education's (CURE) website, community activist and conservative columnist Star Parker will guest co-host "The View" Tuesday, June 19. Parker will appear with the show's long time token non-liberal Elisabeth Hasselbeck. Parker's name is not on "The View's" website, but confirms Michael Moore and Toby Keith are two of the show's guests.

Star Parker is the current president of CURE and a former welfare mother. Parker converted to Christianity and began her life as an activist. Her recent columns included attacking Senator Clinton over her changing stances on Iraq and hailing the Supreme Court for upholding the federal partial birth abortion ban.

Mark Leibovich's front-page profile in Saturday's New York Times of GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney painted the former Massachusetts governor as all style and little substance -- "Polished and Upbeat, Romney Struggles to Connect on Stump."

"Mitt Romney loves the word 'great.' As in, 'Have a great day,' 'Things are going great,' 'I’m feeling great.' Mr. Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, also looks great, sounds great and smells great, like shaving cream. Everyone who asks him something gets a 'Thanks, great question.'"

[…]

"In a halting cadence, Mr. Faux (pronounced 'Fox') explained that his 26-year-old son, an Army National Guardsman, was about to leave for Iraq.

"'What is your plan to fix this problem?' Mr. Faux asked, his voice breaking slightly.

This may come as a surprise to many religious Americans in the country: PBS this month is broadcasting a documentary presenting both sides of the controversial issue of the “separation of church and state.”

As many of you know, this has been an ongoing debate for decades as to when this term first appeared, and what the Founding Fathers’ intent truly was concerning government involvement in organized religion.

The documentary’s goals are described thusly at the PBS website (emphasis added throughout):

News people often hedge on the accuracy of the existence of God, but National Public Radio showed an ease in declaring they were in the presence of a "goddess" (no quote marks for her) on Thursday's All Things Considered newscast. The "feminine divine" in question was 9-year-old Sajani Shakya. Anchor Michele Norris proclaimed "she is a goddess, or Kumari, venerated as a deity in the Kathmandu valley of Nepal," who was visiting Washington as part of the Silverdocs film festival. NPR reporter Neda Ulaby began:

ULABY: The goddess is, frankly, a little jet-lagged. But adorned with golden saffron robes and a ceremonial third eye painted on her forehead, she's the most majestic 9-year-old this classroom of American kids has ever met.

Clay Waters of Times Watch alerted me to a new item in the Shameless Hillary Department: Ben Smith at Politico.com reports Mother Teresa's missionaries have protested Hillary's use of a photograph of her waving next to Mother Teresa in a Hillary campaign video, in which the announcer said: "Hillary in effect, was the face of America, in Africa, in India..." The picture was used as the words "in India" were narrated. Will the rest of the media follow up on this story?

The head of a politically conservative Catholic group, Fidelis, said he brought the video to the attention of Sister Nirmala, Teresa's successor at the Superior General of the India-based Missionaries of Charity. Fidelis president Joseph Cella called it "wholly inappropriate, disrespectful and disturbing that Hillary Clinton shamelessly exploited Mother’s image as a political tool."

Via The Catholic League.

In a speech in New York, Harvard professor Jessica Stern reportedly told her audience, "Catholic priests are not stepping up to condemn those who kill abortion doctors." Her comments were reported in today's New York Sun (Fri. 6/15/07).

Well, Jessica. The reason that Catholic priests aren't "stepping up" is that there has been no reason to. There have been exactly ZERO murders of abortion doctors and clinic workers in the United States and Canada so far in the 21st century. The last murder was nine years ago in 1998. (Even the defenders of abortion recognize this. Look here.)

Check out the very first line from this June 7, 2007, article in the Los Angeles Times (emphasis mine):

A judge Wednesday ordered Cardinal Roger M. Mahony to testify in a lawsuit alleging that he failed to protect parishioners from a pedophile teacher, but then granted the Los Angeles cleric's request for a trial delay.

Now check out this whopper of a correction from the Times on June 13, 2007 (emphasis mine again):

For the Record
Clergy abuse: An article in Thursday's California section about Cardinal Roger M. Mahony being ordered to testify in a lawsuit said the suit alleged that he failed to protect parishioners from Paul Kreutzer, a pedophile teacher. In fact, the suit accuses the Archdiocese of Los Angeles of failing to protect parishioners from abuse by Kreutzer between 1974 and 1976. Mahony did not become archbishop until September 1985 and is not named in the suit.

The funny thing about "news" magazine blogs is that there's not much difference in editorializing quotient between the magazine and the blog posts. "Anonymous" Joe Klein is a Time columnist, officially, but he has all the partisan tics that the other MSM political gurus have. In looking at the latest Hillary polls showing her solid support among downscale women, Klein argued on Time's Swampland blog:

I suspect that Hillary's showing among women has the most significance. Something has happened here. You see it on the campaign trail. A lot of previously skeptical women have decided that Clinton's Methodist rectitude is needed to clean up the mess the frat boy made in Washington.

It's always entertaining to hear Klein -- who lied his face off for many best-selling weeks about authoring his millionaire-minting Clinton roman a clef Primary Colors, even to his Newsweek bosses -- pronounce on rectitude.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is often touted and consulted by the media when the subject of Islam is broached. Superficially this makes sense--the comprehensive and high-minded name of the organization suggest a seriousness and universality of purpose and membership.

In fact, however, CAIR is no more representative of America's Muslims than the National Organization for Women is of America's female population. Rush Limbaugh brought to my attention an article that makes this point very clear by showing how many actual dues-paying members CAIR has: less than 1700:

Membership in the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has declined more than 90 percent since the 2001 terrorist attacks, according to tax documents obtained by The Washington Times.

An interesting discussion ensued on Tuesday’s “Scarborough Country” surrounding ABC’s “The View” and some of the anti-Catholic positions taken by the various co-hosts.

MSNBC general manager Dan Abrams, sitting in for Joe Scarborough, had Catholic League president Bill Donohue on to discuss his ad placed in Tuesday’s New York Times complaining about the behavior of folks like Rosie O’Donnell and Joy Behar while pointing a finger at Barbara Walters for allowing such antics on her program.

After an introduction, Donohue stated (video available here):

CNN hosted three presidential debates last week, two for the Democrats and one for the Republicans. Democratic candidates were awarded twice as much airtime in a three-day period. CNN has its work cut out for it if it wants to be seen as impartial in the upcoming presidential election.

What tilted the schedule in the Democrats’ favor? Both Sunday’s and Tuesday’s two-hour traditional debates in New Hampshire with each party were hosted by Wolf Blitzer. But on Monday, CNN devoted an hour to the top three Democrat contenders, hosted by the religious-left group Sojourners. Each received 15 minutes of air time. When that hour was over, CNN awarded most of the "second tier" – four more Democratic contenders – more time to discuss their faith in individual interviews on "Paula Zahn Now." That’s almost another two hours for the Democrats.

Update: Regardless of your religious views, the point of my post here is to lampoon the silly false choice posed by the poorly-worded question. I think I know what Quinn and Meacham are getting at. Allow me to be their oracle as to what they meant to ask: "In obtaining salvation, in your faith perspective, which is more important, faith or good works?" That wasn't so hard, now was it?

I know the media don't get religion, but this is ridiculous. Newsweek's "On Faith" discussion question for the week: "What's more important from a faith perspective? Being saved? Or doing good works?"

National Public Radio boasted an "evangelical Christian" commentary on Wednesday night's All Things Considered newscast – and that voice is conveniently trashing conservatives. Fresh from his last NPR commentary dancing on Jerry Falwell’s grave, turncoat former Bush aide David Kuo went at it again. Exploiting CNN’s biased decision to air a special with the leftist magazine Sojourners giving the Democrats an hour to proclaim their faith, Kuo declared that partisan lines are blurring on religion, that Democrats are conducting a "Jesus fair" and Republicans have "no compassion for anyone."

Last night in New Hampshire, Republican presidential candidates were long on conservatism and short on compassion. On immigration, on Iraq, on virtually every issue, the consensus was that America hasn't been tough enough. No compassion for anyone — particularly those 12 million Americans who got here illegally.

When covering religion, the news media has a tendency to grant the Roman Catholic Church the lion’s share of religion coverage – in part due to its size, and in part due to its centralized authority in Rome. Protestant denominations, even the evangelical Protestant mega-pastors, are covered less each year. Unfortunately, that centralized authority also leads to media caricatures of tyranny (remember New York Times editor nastily Bill Keller comparing the Vatican to the Kremlin, the Polish Pope to the Soviet autocrats?)

Time’s David Van Biema and Katherine Mayer crack a little too wise in this week’s story on Anglicanism (their cover story in the Europe and the South Pacific editions), noting not only "Roman-style lockstep," but a "useful Catholic authoritarianism." This has a very obvious whiff of politics, comparing Pope Benedict to a tinhorn dictator like a Francisco Franco or a Juan Peron. The pontiff is not a dictator, and no one is forced to join a Catholic church or forced to obey its moral dogmas.

What are the odds Ben Affleck would refer to Muslims who believe literally in the Koran as "Neanderthals?" But when it comes to Christians . . .

As NewsBuster Geoffrey Dickens has noted, Affleck appeared on yesterday evening's edition of Hardball. And while it's true that the actor/director/Dem activist offered a generally innocuous analysis, he did manage to engage in a bit of religious bigotry.

Affleck's foul foray arose in the course of his discussion of the way the various Republican candidates have dealt with the issue of evolution and creationism. Talk turned to the former governor of Arkansas.

BEN AFFLECK: I think Huckabee actually framed his position in a much less dramatic way than had been made out. Which was he said it could be six days, or it could be six epochs, which I thought was much more along the kind of intelligent design lines than his position had been cast. In other words, he had been made out to a little bit of a kind of like a real sort of Neanderthal about it, a literalist.

View video here

A battle of wits between two men named Christopher took place in Berkeley, California, on May 24. Unfortunately, one contestant came embarrassingly unequipped, so much so that by the end, he chose to not even respond.

Break out the cashews and your favorite libation, sports fans, because this debate between former New York Times Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges, and the never at a loss for words Christopher Hitchens was one for the ages.

The following video is an edited compilation of key moments as prepared by our friend at Zombietime (h/t Allah). What follows is ZT’s transcript of this video. However, the reader is highly encouraged to view all of the videos of this event created for your viewing pleasure:

On Tuesday’s "Good Morning America," the ABC program devoted two segments to promoting the religiosity of the 2008 Democratic contenders. At the same time, a graphic hopefully asked, "Are evangelicals embracing Democrats? New party of God?"

Recapping a CNN sponsored event on Monday night where '08 contenders talked about their faith, ABC featured two liberals who were making the Democratic case for Christian voters. GMA co-host Robin Roberts interviewed Jim Wallis, the left-wing editor of Sojourners magazine. Neither Roberts, nor the ABC graphic made any mention of his liberal slant. Additionally, a segment hosted by reporter Dan Harris featured this quote from one Mara Vanderslice:

Mara Vanderslice (Sr. Partner, Common Good Strategies): "This year, I think the Democrats are more comfortable talking about religion and values."

 

Vanderslice just happens to have strong ties to the Democratic Party, is the former Director of Religion for the 2004 John Kerry campaign and had past associations to extreme left wing groups. Perhaps GMA viewers should have been apprised of those facts in relation to Vanderslice’s contention that Democrats are "more comfortable" with religion.

Appearing on last Sunday’s "Reliable Sources," "Good Morning America" co-host Robin Roberts provided a look into the secular world of America’s newsrooms. She told CNN host Howard Kurtz that although her faith is very important, she admitted to, in the past, being "very fearful" about discussing religion on GMA. Prompted to explain why, the ABC anchor elaborated:

Robin Roberts: "Because, because you don't do that. You don't let – You're not supposed to, we're not supposed to talk about faith. We're not supposed to let people-- I bought into that."

Mr. Kurtz also asked Roberts about a late March town hall meeting with Hillary Clinton that ABC televised. According to the GMA anchor, the reason there’s been no follow-up event with any of the Republican candidates is because Clinton has thus far been the only one to respond. She also explained why the ABC program allowed the New York Senator to pick the topic for discussion:

It never ceases to amaze me to see how ignorant The Washington Post is about Catholic teaching---the latest example being staff writer Peter Slevin's liberally biased slam against Abp. Raymond Burke on p. A2 of the May 29 edition. The ignorance (or anti-Catholicism?) is clear in the very first sentence, which is false, in the first paragraph. "When it comes to expressing his views of church values, Roman Catholic Archbishop Raymond Burke has a habit of making headlines, not always to the satisfaction of his flock," writes Slevin. These are not, of course, "his views." They are the views and stipulations of the Catholic Catechism, the Code of Canon Law, and numerous papal encyclicals that often teach definitively on certain matters. Slevin apparently never cracked the Catechism, and he apparently never Googled it because it is online, as is the Vatican, with all the relevant documents.

Abp. Burke has spoken out against abortion; against politicians who support abortion; against entertainers who support anti-Catholic teachings but also want to perform at Catholic functions; against using embryonic stem cells for research; and so on. And this is what apparently ticks Slevin and his editors off: A Catholic Bishop who actually tells his flock the Truth about Catholic teaching and how Catholics must strive to seek holiness and save their souls.

Frank Gaffney's film "Islam vs. Islamists" -- ripped out of PBS's post-9/11 film series "America At The Crossroads" like unsightly hair off PBS's back -- has now found a distributor in Oregon Public Broadcasting. Is that good news? It might be good that more of the public might have a chance to see it. But its new distribution deal with OPB means it's completely optional for PBS stations to air it, and whenever they want -- like 3 AM on a Monday morning. That's a far cry from the prime-time national PBS feed, with all the public-relations weight that the "Crossroads" series managed.

In The Washington Post, Paul Farhi framed the tale with a narrative of bald-faced intervention by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which is supposed to just hand over the money to PBS and shut up, like a kid who gets his lunch money stolen daily. The PBS elite talks a phony game of artistic integrity and independence, but it's a liberal sandbox, and if you don't have something liberal to say, your ball gets taken away. We might offer some kudos to the Post for noting the deal, and letting Gaffney speak:

ABC has just announced co-host Rosie O'Donnell will not return to "The View." Brian Frons, president of Disney ABC's Daytime Television made the announcement.

"We had hoped that Rosie would be with us until the end of her contract three weeks from now, but Rosie has informed us that she would like an early leave. Therefore, we part ways, thank her for her tremendous contribution to 'The View' and wish her well."

"View" creator Barbara Walters also made her statement.

"I brought Rosie to the show. Rosie contributed to one of our most exciting and successful years at 'The View.' I am most appreciative. Our close and affectionate relationship will not change."

During Monica Goodling's testimony before the House Judiciary Committee testimony Dem congressman Steven Cohen of Tennessee quizzed the former Justice Department official regarding her Christian faith and the law school at Regent University, founded by Pat Robertson, that she attended.

An internet search reveals brief references to the interrogation in articles by Dana Milbank in the Washington Post and Maura Reynolds in the Los Angeles Times. But I saw no coverage of the grilling on any of the morning news shows, nor have CNN or MSNBC picked it up as far as I have noticed.

I'm setting forth the actual transcript below, taken from this article, with the following changes. In place of "Regent" university, I'm substituting the name of an apocryphal Islamic university, which I'm calling "Prophet." In place of Christian or Christianity, I'm substituting Muslim. And in place of God, Allah.

Now imagine what kind of MSM uproar there would have been if a Republican congressman had posed these questions to a person of Muslim faith.

Congressman: And it says you went -- chose Muslim universities in part because they -- value they placed on service. What was the other [reason] that you chose Muslim universities?

Almost 28 years ago I toyed with my first professional writing adventure. My college roommate Joe Duggan had approached me with the proposition that we freelance a profile piece on the man who was grabbing national headlines with his political activism, so we drove down to Lynchburg Virginia, attended a service at the Thomas Road Baptist Church, and then settled in for an hour-long interview with its founder. Yesterday I returned to that church, this time with my son David, and joined by the 6,000 packed inside the building, and thousands more seated at Liberty University’s Vines Center and Williams stadium, we paid our final respects at Jerry Falwell’s funeral service.

His story is one of extraordinary professional accomplishments: The Thomas Road Baptist Church, with 24,000 members; Liberty University, with 27,000 students and 125,000 graduates; the Old Time Gospel Hour radio and television programs – on and on it goes, a ministerial enterprise that operates on a $200 million annual budget. Oh, and along the way he also founded the Moral Majority, the political juggernaut critically instrumental in the election of Ronald Reagan.

We reported yesterday about the evolving headline for an AP story on a poll showing a quarter of American Muslim males think that terrorism is sometimes justifiable.

Well now Ace of Spades took it a step further, taking a wider look at how other news agencies are similarly downplaying the alarming statistic with headlines that spin the results positively.

It's worth the read, although I have noticed that at least one headline has changed since Ace's post:

"Gay bishop snubbed by Anglican conference" reads the headline for the May 22 Reuters article by Luke Baker. But take a look at the lede and second graf and you'll see there are two bishops to be excluded from the gathering of Anglican prelates:

LONDON (Reuters) - The Archbishop of Canterbury, spiritual head of 77 million Anglicans worldwide, has not invited two wayward bishops to a major conference next year, a move likely to stir controversy in the deeply divided communion.

Archbishop Rowan Williams has sent invitations to more than 800 Anglican bishops asking them to attend the Lambeth Conference in July and August 2008, but has not invited two American bishops, Gene Robinson and Martyn Minns.

Charles Johnson over at Little Green Footballs has identified a rather interesting phenomenon at Yahoo this morning.

As the website reported on the results of a just-released Pew Research Center survey of Muslim Americans, the headline continued to change:

One hour and 52 minutes ago, the headline was:

Most U.S. Muslims reject suicide bombings.

Thirty-five minutes ago, the same story was re-released:

Some US Muslims justify suicide attacks.

Will it change again? The second headline is actually less politically correct than the first, so stay tuned...

And here’s the fabulous punch line:

Michelle Malkin takes issue with an AP headline that downplays some frightening numbers in a new poll of Muslim attitudes towards suicide bombing. (updates posted below)

"Most U.S. Muslims reject suicide bombings," AP reports.

Here's what should be headlined from the article about a new Pew poll (which you can find here):

Headline:

"One in four younger U.S. Muslims say suicide bombings to defend their religion are acceptable at least in some circumstances..."

Headline:

All three news magazines devoted a page to remembering Jerry Falwell this week, but Time and Newsweek were each obnoxious in their own way. Time ended their article with a dismissive quote from leftist Jim Wallis: "the Evangelicals have left the Right. They now reside with Jesus." Newsweek displayed false generosity in saying sometimes he was a demagogue, and sometimes he was the ringmaster of a circus: "He could be a demagogue, but he was as much a P.T. Barnum as anything else."

Time magazine, in a back-page article titled "Jerry's Kids" -- which could be an insulting reference to Falwell followers, but is probably intended to bless his more palatable, "more moderate" successors -- Michael Duffy and Nancy Gibbs suggested that Falwell thought party labels were more important than the social issues: